Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [44]
The venue for this tequila moment was the Hawley Arms in Camden. Within eight weeks, chef and musician Claire had moved in with her. Claire has spoken of their wild sex romp. They were once almost thrown out of a cinema in north London as their passionate clinch became more and more passionate. Presumably V For Vendetta hadn’t grabbed their attention, then. They also had sex backstage at a concert in Southampton, minutes before Amy strolled onto the stage.
In his torrid kiss-and-tell interview with the News of the World, entitled BONDAGE, BEATINGS AND BITINGS, Claire claimed that Amy ‘loved being dominated as well as dominating’. He said she once pushed his head under the bathwater during sex. ‘I was under for several seconds. I couldn’t breathe and started freaking out.’ Then there was the time he was ‘clobbered by her huge beehive during a romp’. Never a dull moment, then!
During their year-long affair, they split three times but each time they would get back together after making up. However, the main issue facing their relationship was Blake. Claire found it hard to believe that Amy and Blake really were history. She would promise to have her ‘Blake’s’ tattoo removed but then, hours later, would be spotted not having it removed but hanging out with her former lover. One night, in March 2007, she was spotted enjoying a passionate moment with both Claire and Blake in one single night. Confusion reigned not just in Claire’s mind but in the minds of Amy’s friends, too. ‘I saw Amy when she was on The Sharon Osbourne Show back in October 2006,’ says one friend. ‘She had Blake with her. All the time she was talking about her “boyfriend” – Alex – but was sitting on Blake’s lap and snogging him. She was saying, “Read me out those text messages I sent you – the filthy ones.” It was all pretty gross.’
Later on, Amy and Blake confirmed that many of these suspicions were justified. ‘Our relationship never really stopped, did it, babe?’ said Blake. ‘I was sneaking around making phone calls and we’d meet up for five minutes or ten minutes and in the end we just couldn’t carry on doing that.’
‘Yes,’ replied Amy. ‘There was a time when we didn’t talk to each other but that was because we realised it was better not to talk than talk and cause irreparable damage.’
Amy said of Blake, ‘I’m still really close to him as a friend – though Alex doesn’t like me seeing him, which is understandable.’ By this time, she had written ‘Back to Black’, about her initial break-up with Blake, and was surprised that the theme of the song didn’t cause more of an issue with Claire, who was instead a big fan of the song. ‘I told him the song was about Blake but he didn’t care. Weird, I know!’
So, few were surprised when Amy returned to Blake. However, while Claire may not have been surprised, he was heartbroken, as he revealed in a dramatic outburst on his MySpace page:
After turning up at three in the morning at The Hawley Arms, I saw the ex with her ex and I saw red mist. I was shaking like a leaf and decided to get… leathered while she sat there inebriated and on the lap of her ex. [I’m] skint, heartbroken and homeless – bad luck comes in threes as the old saying goes, but s**t, what’s a man to do?
His outburst – slammed as ‘pathetic’ by one of the tabloids – continued, ‘A friend gave me a little something I hadn’t had in a while – MDMA. I always forget how enjoyable everything was after you taste that rank shit, especially with a couple of Valium, three lines and a little dark rum to wash it down.’ Amy says she understands why Claire felt hurt but adds, ‘Something tells me he’ll be all right.’
Her father Mitch said that Amy’s busy schedule caused problems with her relationship with Claire. ‘It’s like she cut out my heart, bit a chunk out of it, threw it on the floor and stomped all over it,’ said Claire. ‘She’s scared to be happy. I hope she finds happiness one day. She needs looking after but I’m glad that’s not my responsibility any more.’
Amy’s relationship with Claire might have seemed eccentric